Sustainability Newsletter – December 2023

High-five to Vauxhall for its Electric Streets of Britain campaign this month. The campaign has been set up to highlight and support the 40 per cent of households who don’t have off-street parking, and therefore need better local public charging provision. Vauxhall is asking everyone to complete a survey on electricstreets.co.uk about electric car ownership and local charging provision to help it quantify the public need and lobby local councils for better infrastructure.
According to exclusive data collated by Vauxhall, more than 70 per cent of UK councils do not currently have a published strategy in place for the installation of residential on-street charging. The findings come from a Freedom of Information request submitted to 414 councils and local authorities across the UK.

Fisker, the new electric-car brand from California, is making a lot of noise about its sustainability credentials. We haven’t had time to probe further yet on some of the claims, but it is certainly tracking usage of materials and energy more rigorously than many traditional car brands, and has made its lifecycle assessment report - Driven by Impact - publicly available. Its Ocean SUV contains over 50kg of recycled materials and bio-based polymers, and the highest trim level has the option of solar panels on the roof capable of supplying 1,500 extra miles of range a year. Because the brand is a relative start-up that will sell direct rather than through dealerships, it also claims to have an “asset-light” business model requiring less energy and producing less carbon.

Allye Energy, a British start-up, is meanwhile busy using electric-car batteries as energy storage solutions. That in itself is nothing new, on the basis one of the next big challenges on the agenda is storing energy during off-peak supply times to deliver it during peak times and smooth out the grid. Many car companies are constructing business models including second lives for car batteries as energy storage units. But Allye uses the whole battery, cables and cooling management systems, rather than expending energy to disassemble it. The result is energy storage Allye says is “two times cheaper and with 60 per cent lower embedded CO2 than comparable systems”.

Switching back to a topic discussed in a previous Sustainability Newsletter the suede-like material Alcantara used in car interiors by brands as diverse as Ferrari, Hyundai and Renault (to name just a few) has developed a version which is 68 per cent recycled polyester. Ferrari’s Purosangue SUV used it to great fanfare at its launch, and other versions with differing percentages of recycled material are available in Hyundai’s Ioniq 5N and Kona. Technically, Alcantara can be recycled at the end of its life to produce non-woven fabrics, insulating panels or foam. But the separation and collection processes aren’t at mass volume yet, so Alcantara has launched a research programme aimed at reusing waste and end-of-life products to create more alternative materials. The project has achieved success at lab level, and Alcantara has now teamed up with GR3N, a start-up trying to eliminate plastic waste on a global scale, to look at scaling up the recycling of both post-industrial and post-consumer waste material.

• Sustainability newsletter – November 2023 | Costs for EV batteries fall, funding for UK-sourced lithium project, GM goes renewable and Lynk & Co commits to life cycle CO2 audits
• Sustainability newsletter – October 2023 | Costs for EV batteries fall, funding for UK-sourced lithium project, GM goes renewable and Lynk & Co commits to life cycle CO2 audits • Sustainability newsletter – September 2023 | Erin Baker shares her thoughts on the UK's changing net zero targets and delaying the 2030 ban for new petrol and diesel cars. • Sustainability newsletter – August 2023 | Zapmap reports increased charger installations, Lime's e-mobility revolution and Nissan's autonomous driving • Sustainability newsletter – July 2023 | Public charging network expands, hydrogen back on the agenda and choosing green tyres • Sustainability newsletter – June 2023 | BMW helps electrify the UK’s national parks and Kia ditches leather across its range of cars • Sustainability newsletter – May 2023 | What upholstery will you be choosing for your next car - leather or pleather?